Virtual supermarket makes shopping easy for city residents

Santoni's Supermarket delivers groceries to customers

An award-winning program by the Baltimore City Health Department is helping bring fresh, healthy food into so-called food deserts around the city and residents don't have to leave their living rooms to participate.

Some women are shopping for all kinds of goods at Santoni's Supermarket in east Baltimore, but they're not shopping for themselves. They're shopping for people in neighborhoods all over Baltimore. It's part of the Balti-Market Virtual Supermarket program.

"It's really convenient for a lot of residents, and for many residents now this is the program they rely on in order to get their groceries," said Laura Fox with the Baltimore Health Department.

The city health department started the program three years ago and it's been growing ever since. They just won a state innovation award.

Here's how it works: Any resident in their seven target neighborhoods can go onto Santoni's website with a special code and order their groceries. They still have to pay for them, but the delivery fee is waived. Then, once a week, Santoni's delivers the groceries to the neighborhood.

"This is a way for these residents in these neighborhoods to access healthy and affordable food. It takes away the transportation barrier of them needing to take multiple buses or taking a cab to get to and from the grocery store," Fox said.

Clients can buy any product sold at Santoni's except for tobacco, but the focus is on healthy nutritious food.

"We do incentivize the purchase of healthy food. So for every fourth order, residents get $10 off for healthy food purchases and that's any fruit or vegetable, whole grain, low-fat dairy," Fox said.

Santoni's already ran an online delivery service before they were approached to be a part of this program so they were happy to step in to deliver fresh, nutritious food into underserved communities in Baltimore.

"Knowing the neighborhood and the people we serve, we feel it's our civic duty to get involved and help these neighborhoods stay strong, healthy and have balanced diets put food on the table," Rob Santoni said.

The health department is working to expand the program. They're hoping to serve five more neighborhoods within the next year.